_ge: Magic E Can Make G Sound Soft, Too!

Magic E, silent at the end of a word, most notoriously makes a vowel say its name, or long sound. Its powers do not stop there! We learned that in addition to making 'c' soft, it can also make 'g,' which usually makes a hard /g/ sound as in 'ghost,' say a soft /j/ sound. It does so, for example, in "age," "huge," and "change."

This catchy G and C shanty helps us remember the conditions under which these letters *usually* make their soft sounds. Remember, of course, English loves to break its own rules, so these patterns apply most of the time.

Games to Practice

Click the picture below to play a match-up game practicing the soft g (_ge) spelling pattern:

Click the picture below to challenge yourself with anagrams! Can you unscramble the _ce and _ge words correctly?

Heart Words to Review + Magic E Exceptions

This week the students brought home a list of recently learned heart words, as well as words that are high frequency exceptions to the "magic e" spelling pattern. We learned that no English word ends in just "v," which is why there are short vowel words that end in _ve, where the e is silent, such as "have," or "live."  We also learned about the "Scribal O." It is speculated that a long time ago, words like "love," "some," and "done" were spelled with a U but the scribes (the people whose job it was to write all the words down) had a hard time reading the U next to letters that looked similar. So, in these words they changed U to O to make it easier to read.

  

 

_ce: Magic E Can Make C Sound Soft!

 Magic E, silent at the end of a word, most notoriously makes a vowel say its name, or long sound. Its powers do not stop there! It can also make a c, which usually makes the /k/ sound, soft. It does so, for example, in "ice," "face," "space," and "twice."

Check out these videos to review this slightly less common but very helpful pattern.

Play to Practice the "_ce" Pattern:

This picture/word match up game asks you to identify the correct soft c word using the _ce pattern. Click the picture to play!

Decodable Passage: Can you read and illustrate this mini story practicing the _ce pattern?

    Grace had a pet mouse named Ace. Grace made a nice space for Ace. Ace had a tube to race through. He had a wheel that he could go on his face. But, Grace did not let Ace out of his cage when she was not home, just in case. 

    When Grace was home, she did let Ace out. Once, Ace got a slice of cake and made a huge mess! Grace did not get mad. She just gave Ace's face a wipe and got the cake slice from him.

Heart Words to Practice

We have been working on collaboratively coming up with (often goofy) mnemonic devices to help us remember the trickier irregular spellings.

here, where, there (*remember: Hairy Elephants Run Everywhere!)

who (*remember: Who has oranges? We Have Oranges!)

my, by

one (*remember: add one e on to the end of on!)

once (*remember: Once upon a time...Octopus Never Chased Eels!)

Long U -- 2 sounds with the help of Magic E!

 There are 2 different sounds that can be spelled with "Magic E" in a u_e pattern.  It can make a sound like in the word "June" or "flute," or more of a "yoo" sound like in "cute" or "mule." We learned that when you encounter a word you're not sure of with u_e during reading, you may need to 'flip' the vowel sound if the first try does not sound right or make sense.

Magic E! Helping vowels make their "long" sounds

 Up until this point, we have been focused on applying patterns in short vowel words. Enter "Magic E" -- we know that at the end of a word, it can jump over one consonant to help the vowel "say its name" (or make its long vowel sound).

It can turn "tap'" into "tape," "kit" into "kite," and "hop" into "hope," just to give a few examples. Check out these cute videos to review:

Home Practice

Feel free to follow along with this video by ELL with Ms. Darla to review "magic e" in words using i. Use a whiteboard and marker, or just a pencil and paper.

Games to Practice

Silent (Magic) E Bowling Game -- choose the best magic e long vowel word to complete the sentence. Click here to play!

Magic E match game -- can you use your reading skills and memory to match pairs of pictures and their correct magic e words? Click here to play!

Decodable Text

"Jake's Great Escape" is full of opportunities to practice reading magic e words! Click the picture to read:

Heart Words

While we have not yet in-depth explored "y" making the long i sound in a 1 syllable, we introduced that pattern to learn the heart words "by" and "my." We talked about WHO being an acronym for the World Health Organization, to help us remember that tricky heart word where none of its letters follow regular spelling patterns!  We have been using the silly mnemonic device, "Hairy Elephants Run Everywhere!" to help us remember "here, there, and where." 

When you review heart words, it is helpful to tap out the sounds first, map in the corresponding letters, and draw hearts under/around the parts that have "irregular" spelling -- that is, the parts we need to know "by heart."

here      there       where        by          my         who        could      should      would      they       their